Hearts Beating for Liberty: Women Abolitionists in the Old Northwest

Afterword

Afterword In reply to a request from Susan B. Anthony to write down her memories of woman’s rights activism in the antebellum West, Emily Rakestraw Robinson included a brief antislavery reminiscence. In “Our Old Anti-Slavery Tent,”Robinson described the life span of a canvas tent,a piece of which she included in the letter. After hosting revival meetings in western New York, the tent housed the 1843 Liberty Party convention in Buffalo that nominated James G. Birney for president.The shelter soon found its way to Ohio, providing cover as young abolitionist students graduated from Oberlin College in the 1840s before the Western Anti-Slavery Society bought the tent for five hundred dollars. “Under its sheltering roof all the noted anti-slavery orators and advocates have been heard in their pleadings and appeals to God,”Robinson recalled. And it continued to serve the cause even as it aged. “In 1863, the tent was in a dilapidated condition—its . . . work done and the abolition of slavery assured—we decided to economize the wreck.” Selling its best parts for one hundred dollars and repairing the rest, western abolitionists donated the proceeds to “terrified fugitives” who had escaped the ravages of war. Like many western women abolitionists who continued their activism in the postwar period, the tent proved its worth long after the official end of U.S. slavery. 202 . afterord This tent, with its simplicity, rustic nature, and solid construction, symbolized the most important characteristics of western women’s antislavery, according to Robinson. It served as a home for abolition meetings, providing shelter and warmth—“feminine”characteristics—to eager crowds. It accommodated all brands of abolitionists, including Liberty Party politicos, religious activists, and Garrisonians. And it remained useful to fugitives, offering protection and aid throughout its history. Western women abolitionists used common assumptions about femininity , including morality, nurturance, domesticity, and sacrifice—qualities they genuinely embraced—to serve the cause of emancipation. But these activists experimented with womanhood, too, pushing at its edges. They walked boldly into the civic arena alongside their brothers and fathers and husbands. They offered political advice to the men of their communities. They negotiated the antislavery political environment of big cities such as Cincinnati. They took to the podium and spoke to “promiscuous” audiences with confidence and authority. Some questioned the limits of their sphere and moved seamlessly into the woman’s rights movement. Like Robinson’s canvas tent, western antislavery embraced all types of abolitionists.Though many women had very strong loyalties to their particular brand of antislavery,they crossed the boundaries between those brands to ensure that the movement benefited from a united constituency. More than their eastern sisters, western women built bridges and interacted with each other. Sometimes they bickered. Sometimes they failed. But mostly they welcomed difference. They focused on the larger goals of emancipation and racial equality.They wanted to make a difference.And they did.They allowed the West’s distinctiveness to guide their activism and give them pride. Like the tent, many women continued their reform work after the Civil War. Laura Smith Haviland, Ruth Dugdale, Sojourner Truth, Betsey Mix Cowles, Emily Rakestraw Robinson, Frances Ellen Watkins, and innumerable other western women remained committed to racial equality and social reform well into old age.This reform work continued in the pragmatic tradition of western abolition.These women remained focused on empowerment through education,aid,and opportunity.Haviland,for example,worked diligently to support her House of Refuge, a home for black southern orphans in Adrian, Michigan. She cajoled, bullied, and manipulated the American Missionary Association into financing the institution despite the hesitancy of its board of directors.Ignoring the opposition of radical abolitionists,who abhorred the association for its former acceptance of slavery and criticized Haviland for working with the group, she recognized that the increasingly afterord . 203 conservative and racist political environment required compromise. Haviland understood that the House of Refuge’s success would offer compelling evidence of the need for egalitarian racial policies and continued humanitarian and educational support for freed slaves. Despite her declining health, Cowles worked with the Freedman’s Aid Society in Cleveland to raise money to for the education and support of newly freed slaves. Sallie Holley, an Oberlin graduate and abolitionist feminist, devoted twenty years to teaching ex-slaves at a school in Virginia. African American women such...